Affiliation:
1. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Perugia, 06132 Perugia, Italy
2. INFN Sezione di Perugia, Via Alessandro Pascoli, 23c, 06123 Perugia, Italy
Abstract
The work presented in this paper represents a preliminary study on the performance of the new Silicon tracker layer, Layer 0 (L0), that will be installed on top of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), at the end of 2024. AMS-02 is a cosmic ray (CR) detector that has been operating on the International Space Station (ISS) since May 2011. Thanks to its nine-layer Silicon tracker, this apparatus can perform high-energy CR measurements with an unprecedented level of statistics and precision. However, high-Z (Z ≥ 15) CR nuclei statistics is strongly affected by fragmentation along the detector: with the installation of the new Silicon layer, it will be possible to achieve new unique high-energy (TeV region) measurements of those nuclei along with increased statistics for all nuclei up to Zinc. To achieve this, a Silicon ladder prototype, which will be part of the final Silicon layer, was exposed to an ion test beam at the super-proton synchrotron (SPS) of CERN to characterize its charge resolution and the readout electronics. Preliminary results have shown a charge resolution of 10 % for nuclei up to Z = 7.